Katie en France: Winter Break Part 1: Paris & Prague

Hello all and welcome to Part 1 of my epic winter break blog updates. Prague was definitely my favorite city, so I'm sure this update will be longer (and with better pictures!) than the others.

So early in the morning the day after Christmas (I spent Christmas Eve and morning with my landlady and her family, where I found myself in a huge cloud of confusion and French...and Christmas night had dinner with some other California students!), I left my apartment and took the train to Paris, where I headed to Disneyland Paris for the day! I met up with my friend Celine from UCSD who studies in Lyon with me, her childhood french friend Alice (Celine lived in Paris until she was 10) and Mimosa, Celine's friend from UCSD who studies in England. We got access to both parks (Disneyland & Walt Disney Studios) and it was REALLY fun! It was obviously pretty Americanized, but isn't that the charm of Disneyland anyway? It was also still decorated for Christmas, which was lovely!

And in case anyone had heard, the rumor is true, the rides ARE way crazier in Europe! There were upside down loops in at least 3 or 4 rides! It was awesome!

So our day was winding down and we decided to go on 2 rides for a second time before the park closed - Indiana Jones (which is actually a crazy wooden roller coaster here!) and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. To start things off, as we hurried through the queue at Indiana Jones, my clumsy self tripped up the stairs and got quite the bump on my knee. You can imagine this made it quite difficult to maneuver my way in the Métro back to Paris with a heavy suitcase!

And then, as we exited the train at Big Thunder, I looked behind me because i thought I had seen a glimmer of something that fell out of my purse. It seemed to be nothing, though, so I moved along towards the exit. I had a sinking feeling that I had dropped or forgotten something, so I searched my purse for my camera.......to no avail. The good ol' Canon Powershot now lays at the bottom of Big Thunder Mountain, with a good 50 pictures of us, the Christmas decorations, and Cinderella's castle inside of it!

So me being me, first thing the next day we went camera shopping. It was slim pickin's, since Christmas had just passed, but I found a new Canon and was good to go for the rest of my trip!

That night at about 9pm our plane set off for Prague, and me, Celine and Mimosa were on our way to Bohemia! The next day, we wandered around trying to find the Old Town Square for an hour or two, and saw a few Christmas Markets, shopping streets, and cool buildings. When we finally found the Old Town square, we realized that it was literally only a 2 minute walk from our hostel! D'oh! At this point we were all frozen to death and on the verge of sickness (this describes quite well the first 2 days that we were there). That night, we had a delicious "traditional" Czech meal of Goulash and Bread dumplings, accompanied by Pilsner Urquell, one of the cheapest most delicious beers I've ever tasted!

The next day, we planned on taking a big 5 hour tour of all of Prague, which included a meal and boat ride, but we couldn't find the meeting place in time so we took ourselves on a tour! We crossed the river and went up to Prague Castle. What I really liked was the quaint little city streets that we walked along to get there. Prague was SO beautiful, I really can't wait to go back some day! That evening we got a nice view of the city from up at the castle, and we headed back to our hostel where we convinced our new room mates who were Taiwanese students studying in the US and an Egyptian to come out with us to the Pub Crawl. So we had our first Pub Crawl and man was it fun!! We met tons of people, none of whom were Czech, ha ha, but all of whom were really fun...from French to South African to Australian and a couple of others...we tried Absinthe for the first time and saw some pretty famous bars in Prague. But all in all it was really fun, and Celine and I amazingly woke up the next morning no longer feeling sick! Go figure!

We spent that day seeing whatever it was we hadn't already seen, like Charles Bridge.. And that evening, after a fatty nap, I actually went on what could probably be considered a date with Emmanuel, one of the french boys we met on the pub crawl the night before. Normally I wouldn't blab this part of the story for all of my family to read, but I thought it was quite a milestone in my experience, finally going on a date with a french boy, in Prague of all places! But it was nice, and we are keeping in touch so hopefully if I play my cards right I'll be able to visit him in the south of France once the weather gets warm!! Oh yes, that sounds nice...

And the next morning at about 8am, I had to wake up and catch my train to Munich. This train ride is another story in itself, as it ended up taking nearly 3 hours longer than it was supposed to....however, just enjoy my beautiful Prague pictures for now!!